Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

“Right, hon, but that was yesterday. What about today?” Sunny’s voice was now muffled and small, balled up in paper, as if she’d turned away from the speaker to fish for something in her handbag.

“Sick days, plural,” Jen said.

Sunny said nothing.

“I’m — I’m entitled to them?” Jen asked.

“Entitled, ha! Don’t I know it,” Sunny said, her voice big and clear again. “Jen, babe, we neeeeed you here. We’re depending on you. Leora’s gonna fa-reek ow-oot if she doesn’t have her team intact, kiddo.”

Jen’s teeth began chattering against the phone. She held it slightly away from her. “I talked to Karina yesterday—”

“I know, hon, I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.”

Jen dropped the phone on the bed and picked it up again. “So Karina told — and Karina said—”

“Jen, honey, Karina asked me to call you.”

“Okay,” Jen said. “Okay. Um, okay. What I was going to say was, I talked to her yesterday and thought we — we had an understanding.”

“We do understand, honey, but we’ve got a launch! We can’t afford to lose another day—”

“You understand ?” Jen said. “That’s funny, a second ago you said you couldn’t possibly imagine.”

“Hey, now, hold up, girl, don’t take this out on me. Channel that sorrow, channel that womanly power and passion, but don’t wield it against someone who’s on your side. Use it for good.”

Jen looked around the bedroom and logged the items in it. This was a technique taught in the mindfulness seminar that was compulsory for all new LIFt staffers. When feeling upset or impulsive, the instructor explained from her lotus-pose perch atop the conference-room table, you should take sixty to ninety seconds to take stock of the physical reality surrounding you. The goal, the teacher said, was to “hit a mental reset button,” in order to make friendly everyday objects feel realer and more immediate than whatever source of anxiety might be flooding your frontal lobes at that instant.

The sun was shining. Jen watched the curtain drifting in the window — off-white on purchase, now a dusky yellow. She counted the watercolor-textured peacocks on the bedspread. She tugged absently at the fitted sheet, puckered in its perpetual slow-motion efforts to unpeel itself from the mattress. She cataloged the books on Jim’s side of the bed — Astors, astrophysics, Aztecs — and the stacks of art catalogs and sketchbooks on her side. She logged Franny, purring on the bed beside her. Franny generally preferred not to be crowded, but she didn’t wriggle as Jen pulled her close and pressed her face into her fur. The phone slipped from between Jen’s ear and shoulder and dropped to the bed again.

“Jen? Are you there?”

Jen stroked Franny’s fur where her tears had dampened it and picked up the phone. “Sunny,” Jen said, “are you seriously telling me I have to come in today?”

“I’m not your keeper!” Sunny said. “I’m not the boss of you. You’re the boss of you. I’m telling you what’s what. I am providing you with information. ”

Tuesday, 3.30 p.m.

“Jen!”

Slowly, methodically, Jen stood up from her desk and turned to see Karina across the floor of the LIFt offices. Karina made a tossing motion over her shoulder: a big beckoning arc. As Jen began to walk toward her, Karina turned her back and returned to her office.

Jen halted. She turned, walked back to her desk, and sat down, the chair wheezing under the impact. She held her fists in her lap and waited.

Her phone rang. Karina’s extension. “Did you get lost?” Karina asked.

“No,” Jen said.

“Well, then, get over here, kiddo, I’m dying to see you.”

Jen slammed the phone down and stalked across the floor to Karina’s office. Her limbs were stiff and heavy. Her face felt sunburned. Everything hurt.

“How are you?” Karina was asking.

“Fine, fine,” Jen said. “So—”

“Sit, please, hon, and shut the door,” Karina said.

Jen shut the door but remained standing. “So we have the first passes on the edits on the videos—”

“That’s good. But I wasn’t asking how are the edits. I was asking how are you ?”

“I’m fine.”

“Feeling okay physically?”

“Yup.”

“And what about emotionally?”

“Yup.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yup. Yeah. Yes.”

“Oh, honey, I wish I weren’t out of tissues.”

Jen swiped the back of her hand across one cheekbone, then the other. “No, I’m okay, I just — I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s — I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, you don’t have to talk about it with little old me. But you shouldn’t keep it bottled up. Forgive me for asking, but is there a licensed professional you’ve been in contact with?”

Jen could feel her tears hitting her blouse. She stared at the cluster of framed photographs on Karina’s desk. Karina with Leora, blurred at a cocktail party, their eyes rabid red in the camera’s pop. Karina with her tousle-haired, bespectacled husband on some beach. Karina with her son and daughter when they were babies, toddlers, preschoolers. “I’m okay,” Jen said. “I appreciate your concern.”

“What I can’t—” Karina paused. She looked up toward the ceiling, as if for celestial counsel, and then spoke very slowly. “What I can’t…put my finger on…” she said, “is why…well, given that this was unplanned…why you are so upset.”

Jen kept looking at the photographs. Karina’s son had his father’s features and his mother’s coloring; her daughter had the inverse. “I guess that is strange, isn’t it,” Jen said to the photographs. Her mind busied itself projecting their faces, tracing the projections, painting the traces.

“Strange? No, that’s not the word I would use,” Karina said. “I just don’t understand, and I want to, because I care about you. We all do. We’re all thinking about you right now.”

The beachy highlights in Karina’s daughter’s hair might be tricky to mix — too much white would turn them to toothpaste, but too much yellow would bleach them chlorine green.

“I have the edits,” Jen said to the photographs, “and I’d love to know if you want to watch them or if we can go ahead and finish up with them.”

“Of course,” Karina said. “You want all of this to be over with.”

Jen kept her head down as she walked back to her desk, one cupped hand held faux-pensively to her philtrum to conceal any redness or swelling until she flump ed back into her chair. Daisy knocked gently on their shared cubicle wall, and Jen knocked reassuringly back.

whatDaisyknew: ARE YOU OK

jenski1848: No. But yes.

Daisy replied by attaching a.jpg file of a dachshund puppy enfolded in a hamburger bun.

jenski1848: Thanks, D. You’re a good friend.

Daisy did not reply.

“Dad emailed to say how upset you were that I hadn’t called in a while,” Jen was saying to her mother. “I’m really sorry.”

“What?” Jen’s mom asked, twisting the word out to three syllables, phlegmy with incredulity. “I never said that. Your father, for goodness’ sake!” Jen’s mom sighed and regained her composure.

“Well, in any case, I’m sorry, Mom.”

“You have a lot going on.”

“No, it’s not that — I just — haven’t been feeling well.”

“Oh? Are you eating right? Exercising?”

“I — no, I guess I haven’t been doing those things as much as I should.”

“You should see a doctor,” Jen’s mom said. “There’s not a whole lot your old mom can do for you if you’re not taking care of yourself. Go talk to a doctor.”